Jason Terry: Players ready to walk on Stern’s CBA offer

Dallas Mavericks player representative Jason Terry said that if the proposal NBA commissioner David Stern delivered to the union late Thursday night is not a substantial improvement from the league’s one prior, players will be prepared to walk away, even if it threatens losing the entire season. "Our reasoning and what our strategy is, is we are trying to grow the game of basketball, and under the terms that have been presented to us, the game of basketball for us, from a players’ perspective, financially, will not be growing," Terry said Friday morning during an appearance on the "Ben and Skin Show" on 103.3 FM ESPN.

Do players, like Jason Terry, accept what union head Billy Hunter has called a mediocre offer and play a 72-game season? Or, do they reject the offer, decertify, and destroy the 2012 season?

Sadly, the latter is winning.

Owners and players have settled on the elephant in the room issue, Basketball Related Income.

Both sides agreed on a ‘band system’ to split BRI evenly at 50%. In the past, owners received 43%, while players received 57%.

This, however, is not the source of contention. Players are unhappy with the system issues, specifically the owners restricting loopholes like the mid-level exception and sign-and-trades for teams over the salary cap.

Here’s my question: how many players each year get the full mid-level exception and/or switch teams via a sign-and-trade?

The answer: not many.

In the owners’ latest offer, over-the-cap teams can still use a scaled back version of the mid-level exception and sign-and-trades, too. This sounds fair. And at a certain point, owners and players must cut a deal or lose the season.